LINCOLN SQUARE — Chicago's skyscrapers are total attention magnets, but at street level it's the houses that give the city its character.
This slideshow, put together by the folks at Rent Cafe, features 165 years of Chitown's residential styles, from a gothic revival built in 1850 in Marquette Park to a contemporary/modern Bucktown home built in 2014.
Anyone who's ever tuned into WTTW-Channel 11 during pledge week and taken a virtual architecture tour with Geoffrey Baer will likely recognize Prairie and Victorian styles. But the slideshow also offers up examples of Georgian, Italianate, Beaux Arts, Art Nouveau, Neo-Baraque and the castle-like Jacobean.
Chicago's homes, it seems, are as varied as the people who live in them.
Standouts, in terms of sheer uniqueness, include South Austin's shingle-style Marie Schock House, which dates back to 1888, and Uptown's Bachman House, built 60 years later in an "A-frame Eclectic" style.
Ravenswood's Abbott House at 4605 N. Hermitage (1891, Queen Anne), is immediately recognizable by its purple wood siding. In Old Irving Park, the John and Clara Merchant House (1872, Second Empire) in the 3800 block of North Kostner Avenue, gets a nod for its unusual four-sided mansard roof.
Even an unassuming home like a 1960 Neo-Classical Colonial in the Horner Park neighborhood merits a mention, with its diagonal setting and low-pitched roof.
You know what this means? Next time you have out-of-town guests, you don't have to schlep them to the Loop to show them Chicago's treasures. Just go for a walk around the block.
Uptown's Bachman House, 1948, A-frame Eclectic. [Flickr/jojolae]
Marie Schock House, 1888, South Austin, Shingle style. [Wikimedia Commons/Thshriver]
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